


give 'em the ol' razzle dazzle

by endeofblood



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Canon-Typical gross metaphors, Implied/Referenced Animal Death, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-04 11:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11553837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endeofblood/pseuds/endeofblood
Summary: CG: YOU’RE IN A CLASS WITH JIMMY JOHN?TG: no hes jimmy johns johnCG: WAIT, HE ISN’T ACTUALLY JIMMY JOHN *FROM* JIMMY JOHN’S?TG: just john from jimmy johnsCG: I SURE AM GLAD WE GOT THAT CLEARED UP.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [auxanges](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auxanges/gifts).



The Crimson Cup wasn’t the only coffee shop adjacent to campus, nor was it the most popular. Nor did it have the best brew. And it certainly didn’t have the friendliest baristas. The Crimson Cup did have two things going for it, though: a school endorsement (its namesake was the Crimson Bolts™, the university’s mascot), and an alliance with the local Jimmy John’s. Around the corner and half a block down the sidewalk, a representative of the equally mediocre sandwich joint would come immediately after the lunch hour, like clockwork, every Tuesday and Thursday. Under the cover of broad daylight, the transaction took place—two sandwiches for the on-duty baristas in return for three medium drinks and two pastries.

Only that particular day, the last afternoon before the official start of the Fall semester, it was 1:45 pm, and there were no sandwiches to behold.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’m going to go ahead and whittle down a straw against the side of the counter and make a small abdominal incision so if my stomach wants to cannibalize the rest of my goddamn body I can at least expedite the process a little.”

Karkat Vantas. Fourth year nursing major. Student manager and veteran barista of three years at the Crimson Cup.

“Sure man, that definitely sounds like your prerogative as a rising star in the professional medical field.”

Dave Strider. Second year archaeology major. Second year barista at the Crimson Cup.

Dave Strider, who was also squatting directly in front of the ‘Drink of the Week’ board propped against the counter, and was adding his SoundCloud username in teeny tiny letters at the very bottom. They were too small to even be legible with the thick and clumsy chalk, but it drove Karkat crazy, which was really the entire point of the exercise. He paused and leaned back on his haunches to admire his handiwork, and added a little cloud at the end for the sake of clarity.

“Oh, and before I forget, take down a memo for me, would you? And listen closely, I don’t want my final words to be misconstrued before they find me awash in a puddle of my own gastric acid.”

“M’all ears, boss.” Dave didn’t look up, taking a picture of the board on his phone.

“Tell them to stop skimping out on the goddamn roast beef. I’m asking for thinly sliced cuts from a seasoned cow, not global stocks in Ghanese gold production.”

“Roast beef, global stocks, the precious metal economy of Africa. Got it.” He popped back up to a standing position, balancing the chalk back on the top of the board and wiping his fingers absently against his apron, leaving faint white streaks over the red fabric. “You’ll be hailed as a martyr in the deli meats community, I can already see the back page Times article about this fifteen years down the line. A true grassroots hero in the front lines against the Big Lunch sandwich conglomerate.”

“Do you listen to yourself when you speak? Like, really listen?”

Before Dave could answer, there was a jingle at the door.

“Fucking finally,” Karkat muttered under his breath at the sight of the black polo with the emblazoned double J logo, but neither of them recognized the person wearing it. Whoever it was had thick glasses frames and the slightest hint of a front tooth gap when he smiled and waved over, both sandwiches balanced precariously in one hand. He approached the counter, and upon further inspection, Dave noted his nametag identified him as ‘John’.

“Heya! Sorry the sandwiches are so late, haha.” John was tall and broad shouldered, with the bare remnants of baby fat stubbornly clinging to his face and torso. The gap between his top two teeth was just noticeable enough to be distracting when he talked.

The expression Karkat had was a terrifying hybrid of his normal face and a customer service one, jaw visibly strained with something too toothy to be a placating smile, and his eyes did absolutely nothing to soften it. “You were supposed to be here half an hour ago.”

“I’m the new guy,” John offered, as if that was all the necessary explanation in the world. He seemed completely oblivious to the fact whatever ungodly arrangement of features that Karkat was hosting on his face was supposed to be anything less than welcoming. “I’ve heard a lot of things about this place though! Er, I mean, kind of. I mean, coffee tastes like ass, but I really admire that you stuck to your guns with the dorky name thing.” He peered at the ‘Drink of the Week’ board that Dave had just finished adding his artistic flourish to.

Usually Dave would have gleefully goaded the situation on until he got another row in ‘Karkat Tantrum Bingo’ (which Rose, in typical one-upmanship fashion, turned into an actual fridge magnet for the back room just before Summer break), but he had a more pressing question on hand.

“Hold on. Your name is John, and you work at Jimmy John’s?”

John looked at him. John looked at his own nametag. John looked back up at him. And then John’s face split into a massive grin. “Do you want to know what it’s short for?”

“Hit me.”

“Jimmy John.”

“No the fuck it is not.”

“Yes the fuck it is! I’m sorry—“ John’s eyes visibly flicked down to read Dave’s own tag—“I’m sorry Dave, but the world is just strange and wonderful beyond our comprehension. Yes. It’s me. I’m the Jimmy John.”

“Dave. Dave. He’s clearly just fucking with you, please build a dam over this bubbling brook of asinine bullshit before it starts and get over it.”

Dave made a note on his phone to remind himself to check off the hangry square in Karkat Tantrum Bingo. “Are you saying you’re the heir to the throne of Jimmy John’s?”

“Dave, that is exactly what I’m saying.”

“Oh my God, will you two shut up?” Karkat snatched a sandwich off the counter, unrolling the paper wrap just enough to make sure he grabbed his own order. “What drinks do you even want?”

John rolled up onto the balls of his toes then back on his heels, like he couldn’t quite stay settled, which was at odds with his height—Dave mentally put him at about six two, since he looked about half a foot taller than his own five eight. “Well… Eridan wanted a caramel makchyato—“

“Macchiato.”

“That’s what I said! And Feferi wanted a hot chocolate and a lemon bar.” John paused thoughtfully. “We get three drinks, right?”

Karkat just nodded, already busy carefully dividing his eight-inch sub in half for optimal ease of consumption.

“I want a Razzle Dazzle Frappuccino.”

Half of sandwich was halfway to Karkat’s mouth where it froze, mid-air. “A what?”

“A Razzle Dazzle Frappuccino.”

Karkat all but dropped the sandwich back on the counter with visible disgust. Dave swallowed back a snicker. “Sir.” There was a special kind of emphasis, and an even more special pause after the honorific. The toothy unsmile made a reappearance, and Dave could tell his manager was seconds away from tenting his fingers in front of his face for emphasis. “Firstly, this is not a Starbucks. We do not use the term frappuccino. Secondly—“

“But it was on the secret menu.”

Karkat audibly sucked air between his teeth, and Dave smothered a laugh into the crook of his elbow under the guise of a sudden ugly bout of coughing. “The secret menu of the Crimson Cup,” Dave managed to repeat in a hushed whisper, with no small amount of awe. “Fucking incredible.”

Dave Strider had worked there long enough that the sight of Karkat bringing both hands up in front of his face, fingertips pressed lightly together, filled him with inexplicable excitement. When Karkat assumed the Position, every other word out of the manager’s mouth was punctuated by a quick thirty degree downward jerk of his pressed hands.

“What… possibly gave you the impression that we, a single shop coffee business that has neither the revenue nor the charm to make itself a local staple or tourist attraction, would possibly, for any reason, have an entirely different menu that we conspire to deprive our customers of? We are barely able to roll out a sufficient quantity of steamed milk, semi gelatinous sucrose paste, and occasionally even a bean or two of actual coffee to satisfy our straggling consumer base, and you think that beneath this faux wooden counter I conceal, what, exactly? The Valhalla of caffeine? Vaikuntha of refreshing Summer beverages? The Elysian Fields of hidden confectioneries? The Big Rock Candy Mountain?”

“Hahah, oh my God, Karkat, you’re a riot.”

By then, Dave was shaking with silent laughter, half braced against the counter, sunglasses pushed halfway up his face with his efforts to hide in his arm. “Fuck,” he said, finally breaking his silence, “this is too goddamn much. Okay, Jimmy, so that’s a caramel macchiato, two hot chocolates, and a lemon bar to go. Maybe next week Scrooge McDuck will lighten his white-knuckled death grip on our secret menu, and we can make your Fapple Dapple--”

“—Razzle Dazzle—“

“Frappuccino for you.”

John seemed to consider this for a moment, drumming his fingers against the side of his leg. Karkat looked like he could absolutely strangle Dave for encouraging him. “Okay, okay, I see.” John gave Karkat an exaggerated wink, as if they were all in on some big secret, now. “Maybe by the time I’m a regular here, you’ll remember how to make a Razzle Dazzle Frappuccino. Eh? Eh?”

“Take a fucking seat, wait for your fucking drinks, and then get out of my fucking store.”

* * *

  
  
Canevazzi Hall for Humanitarian Studies (Can Tower for short) was the catch-all hub for a couple of the smaller majors on campus—namely anthropology, archaeology, and some of the more niche history designations. It also happened to be one of Dave’s favorite buildings, which was… convenient, since that’s where a majority of his major specific classes were once he moved out from the gen-ed swamp of Freshman year.

It was an old, ugly, dingy tower, but Dave found the sloped windows (designed to be riot proof in the 60s) endearing, the fact it smelled perpetually like packaged cheese endearinger, and the way one of his professors let him preserve a dead pigeon from behind the A/C unit for his wet specimens collection to be endearingest. That last one might have been a bit of a health and safety concern, but Dave swore he knew what he was doing when he miraculously produced rubber gloves from the side pocket of his backpack. Never go unprepared.

His Introduction to World Prehistory class was more packed than he’d imagined, a lecture hall wedged in between a couple of the smaller classrooms in the back of the tower’s first floor. From his vantage point on the third row he tried to pick out familiar faces—he quickly spotted Aradia, which was unsurprising, since she was the only friend he’d made in archaeology so far, and a couple of others he’d vaguely remembered seeing around somewhere or another.

It wasn’t until he spotted the mop of black hair and thick framed glasses that Dave very nearly lost his shit.


	2. Chapter 2

CG: YOU’RE IN A CLASS WITH JIMMY JOHN?  
TG: no hes jimmy johns john  
CG: WAIT, HE ISN’T ACTUALLY JIMMY JOHN *FROM* JIMMY JOHN’S?  
TG: just john from jimmy johns   
CG: I SURE AM GLAD WE GOT THAT CLEARED UP.   
TG: the professor did role his name is john eggbert or something   
CG: IF MY LAST NAME HAD THE WORD EGG IN IT I WOULD LIE ABOUT IT TOO.   
TG: ikr   
TG: anyway   
TG: apparently he isnt even an archaeology major  
TG: he says hes undeclared and a sophomore and probably gives his academic adviser night sweats every day of his life   
CG: WAIT, YOU ACTUALLY *TALKED* TO HIM? WILLINGLY? ON YOUR OWN FREE TERMS, OUT FROM UNDERNEATH THE CRUSHING WHEELS OF LATE CAPITALISM?  
TG: yeah i caught him after class got out   
CG: **WHY**?  
TG: jesus karkat it isnt like weve actively declared war on any sandwich shops and/or their buck toothed employees  
TG: i recognized the guy so i talked to him  
TG: itsnotthatdeep.png  
CG: A MAN LOOKS YOU IN THE SUNGLASSES, TELLS YOU TO MAKE HIM A “RAZZLE DAZZLE FRAPPUCCINO” AND YOU STILL WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH HIM OUTSIDE THE CONTEXT OF A STRICTLY PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENT?  
CG: NOT TO MENTION HE LOOKS LIKE A MINECRAFT YOUTUBER FROM LATE 2010 WHO DOESN’T EARN ENOUGH ADVERTISEMENT REVENUE TO AFFORD AN 480p WEBCAM OR DENTAL WORK.  
CG: THE THUMBNAILS OF HIS VIDEOS ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY INCLUDE WORD ART AND A SHOT OF HIM LOOKING JOVIALLY SCANDALIZED SUPERIMPOSED UNDER A SCREENCAP OF POORLY RENDERED PIXEL BREASTS, FOR THE LOLZ.  
CG: “CRAFTTUBE WALKTHROUGH #345: NOT JUST FOR KIDS.”  
TG: i sense you have a lot of feelings about this huh  
TG: i mean ok so hes kind of a dweeb and yeah ok the secret menu thing was annoying but the dudes just so goddamn unabashedly himself its kind of  
TG: charming?? in a sort of ‘how are you a real person who even exists’ kind of way  
TG: the steve buscemi of sandwich shops  
TG: like you know steve buscemi right  
TG: kinda crops up where you least expect it with his sunken eyes and his distant disarming smile  
TG: desperado  
TG: con air  
TG: spy kids  
CG: OKAY, YES, I GET IT, I KNOW WHO STEVE BUSCEMI IS.  
TG: theres a level of sincerity there karkat  
TG: the world is cruel but john buscemi rises above  
TG: also i grabbed the stores card at the end of my morning shift do we need anything from walmart besides coffee filters  
CG: DO WE HAVE ANY HAZELNUT?  
TG: que  
CG: DONDE ESTA LA GODDAMN HAZELNUT.  
CG: AVELLANA.  
CG: THE SHAKER IN THE SPICE RACK IS EMPTY.  
TG: did you check the set of shelves by the back fridge isnt that where it usually is?  
CG: …  
CG: I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU TWENTY SECONDS IN A MAGNANIMOUS ACT OF FAITH TO LET YOU RECONSIDER WHAT YOU JUST SAID.  
TG: wait  
TG: you cant reach the top shelves can you  
CG: NEARLY AN ENTIRE HALF A MINUTE OF GOOD WILL, SQUANDERED JUST LIKE THAT.  
TG: ok ok keep your unusually high rising tightpants steady captain lollipop guild ill be there in like ten minutes

 

Dave was gone for much longer than ten minutes, and his final destination was Michael’s, not Walmart. The Crimson Cup had a little more business that afternoon, and a couple of the tables near the front were occupied by a handful of students who were likely there more for the free wifi than the coffee. Dave was able to slip past Karkat—who was taking an order from a woman with a high ponytail and acknowledged the other barista with a quick nod—and into the back room with little interruption, a shopping bag tucked under one arm and a short black rectangle under the other.

As soon as Karkat covered the rest of the orders, he poked his head into the back. “Strider? Did you get the hazelnut?” His eyes tracked down to where Dave was kneeling on the floor, and Dave could practically hear him mentally buffering. Dave’s newest creation sat next to the fridge, and he took his time in unpeeling the plastic backing from the last foam letter—a giant red T—and gingerly placing it at the very end of the unfolded step stool. K-A-R-K-A-T read across the very top of the offending object, just tall enough to, hypothetically, let a shorter than average person access the top shelves.

There was an audible slap as Karkat’s palm connected to his forehead, and he dragged his hand down the entirety of his face. “Strider.” That very special pause for very special emphasis was back, and Dave tipped back enough to slide from a kneel and sit on his ass in a self-satisfied kind of way. “If you have any kind of appreciation for the fact I sign your weekly checks, at least lie to me and tell me you did not use the store’s card, and by extension, the Crimson Cup bank account, to purchase a plastic step stool with my name embellished on it in gaudy arts and crafts.”

Dave paused for a moment. “Okay, I definitely didn’t use the store’s bank account to buy you a step stool.”

“Thank God—“

“Except that I did, because it counts as a necessary business expense.”

“Was the foam lettering also a goddamn necessary business expense?”

“Will you at least try it?”

“…What?”

Dave broadly gestured at the step stool. “Come on, try it on for size.”

“If this is an elaborate attempt at mockery I would love to remind you I’m no more than four inches shorter than your diminutive—“

“Karkat, just humor me, buddy.”

The ensuing sigh was so loud Dave idly wondered if it was possible to let a lung collapse that way, and Karkat stalked towards the step stool. With absolutely no trace of zeal or enthusiasm, he climbed up to reach for the shelf—and easily reached the top, swinging the highest drawer open. There was a moment of silence. “We don’t have any hazelnut,” he announced, slamming it shut again.

“I bought some, it’s on the counter.”

Karkat dismounted from the stool, grabbing the container out of the Walmart bag Dave had left by the sink. “…The lettering is still ridiculous,” he muttered, but it was his parting shot before walking back out to the register. There might have even been a note of begrudging gratitude attached.

“Anything for my best friend,” Dave called after him, raising his voice just enough for everybody in the store to hear. Karkat closed the door to the back a little more firmly than necessary. Dave mentally chalked it up as a win.  


* * *

 

The next day was a Thursday. Dave didn’t work Thursdays—Karkat was almost sad to wipe his SoundCloud information off the bottom of the board for the third time that week and settle in for a long late morning to mid afternoon shift. He snagged his apron off the labeled hook in the back room and tied it snugly around his waist, using the lull in activity out front to fuss over some of the ingredients in the back. Growing up, it was mostly just him and his grandfather (a decidedly crabby old man with stark white hair and a penchant for the absolutely disgusting roe cubes he stored in the freezer), with the exception of frequent visits from extended family. Being the only one in the household who cooked, he’d picked up a lifelong love of food, and he was fussy about the way it was stored and handled.

They were a struggling little coffee shop, school endorsement or not, and had Karkat installed the spice rack along the back wall himself about two months after he started working there. It wasn’t terribly tall or terribly wide, but the iron hooks screwed into the wall were a labor of love. Each label on each shaker was carefully handwritten, and half the displayed ingredients were things he’d ordered. Ginger, clove, cardamom, allspice—he ran his fingers over the glass undersides of each, straightening them out where some of the other baristas had thrown them in at the end of the last day’s shifts.

After that, he had to concede maybe he had been a little quick to dismiss Dave’s gift as condescending—the step stool let him do a full inventory, sorting through the shelves and seeing that they had everything that they needed. Halfway through going through the top row, there was a jingle at the door; Karkat hadn’t even realized it was already 1:15 until he checked his phone on his way to the counter.

“Hi Karkat!”

Oh God. It was Jimmy John from Jimmy John’s.

**Author's Note:**

> I have two and a half chapters done so far, and I hope to get the third chapter uploaded sometime this week. That'll probably mark the roughly halfway point of the work overall? I'm not entirely sure. Anyhow, this is my first try at writing John! I hope it's acceptable, haha.


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